More than three weeks on the job, new Diamondbacks General Manager Mike Hazen still won’t come out and say what he intends to do with the club he inherited, whether it’s trying to contend despite their disappointing season in 2016, tearing down and aiming for the future – or something in between.

But during each of the past two days at the GM meetings this week in Paradise Valley, Hazen has sort of talked around a possible plan of action without really spelling it out.

He discussed rebuilding his bullpen and improving his defense while having faith in the development of his starting pitching. He mentioned the likelihood that the vast majority of the club’s position players will return intact. He talked about not making the mistake of thinking a team is worse than it is.

And he all but assured that right-hander Zack Greinke will return in 2017.

Rival executives, evaluating the Diamondbacks from afar, see this as a reasonable course of action for a team that they believe underperformed its true talent level. “You have to think,” one GM said, “that by just rolling out the baseballs they’ll improve, right?”

But executives also believe the club could greatly benefit from doing something with Greinke, whose average annual salary of $34 million represents about 34 percent of the team’s payroll, which Hazen said was likely to be in the same $100 million range as this year.

“That would be the first thing I’d try to get rid of somehow, someway, just to give me some flexibility going forward,” another rival GM said. “You’ve got some pretty good talent, ideally, coming back healthy to round that out, but it’s tough to do when 30-something percent of your payroll is tied up in one guy.”

Greinke, who still has five years remaining on the $206.5 million deal he signed last December, had a disappointing first season with the Diamondbacks, posting a 4.37 ERA in 158 2/3 innings.

Hazen said he has communicated with Greinke in recent weeks, initially over the phone and then again via text on Tuesday night after he captured his third consecutive Gold Glove award. He praised Greinke’s intelligence and intimated that the former Cy Young winner had offered opinions on the Diamondbacks’ roster.

“Not too many teams have number one starting pitchers, and we do,” Hazen said. “I would anticipate that he’s going to be back next year. How the offseason goes, we’re fully anticipating that Zack is going to be back next year.”

Despite those comments, another executive said his club got the impression the Diamondbacks were willing listen on Greinke – and just about anyone else on the roster.

By all accounts, even if the Diamondbacks decided to restructure their club rather than tear it down, they have a variety of avenues they could pursue. Their big league roster features both infield and outfield depth, including a handful of players – namely, Brandon Drury and Chris Owings – who offer wide-ranging positional flexibility.

“The more I think it opens up avenues for creativity when players play the amount of positions that they do,” Hazen said. “That’s an asset, I think, that this club has. I think it’s an asset in roster construction from a front office perspective, too. It’s sort of a dual asset, so to speak.”

Executives feel that the Diamondbacks don’t necessarily have to determine a course of action now – and, in fact, there might be benefits to waiting to do so. There’s some chance, they say, that with some small tweaks to the roster the Diamondbacks could be a surprise club next year.

“They can always focus on the medium and long term,” one of the GMs said, “and then if an opportunity for the short term presents itself they can shift gears.”

And if the Diamondbacks have a rough first half next season, they can shift gears in the opposite direction. Another GM noted that they have the kind of talent that would attract interest on the trade market if they were sellers, but he feels there are advantages to waiting.

“I think there are a lot of pitching assets that are down right now that they need to rehabilitate,” the GM said, a statement that applies to nearly every pitcher on the Diamondbacks’ big league roster, from Greinke to fellow starters Shelby Miller and Patrick Corbin.

But, for now, Hazen says he and his front office are still determining what they’ll do.

“I think right now,” he said, “where you’re able to just listen more than talk, hear what other teams have to say and agents have to say, and then, again, as we get our arms around our roster and what direction we want to move in, we’ll make those decisions.”

Reach Piecoro at (602) 444-8680 or nick.piecoro@arizonarepublic.com. Follow him on Twitter @nickpiecoro.